I mean I want to see

Garlands

Languages:
- French: memorise how to conjugate tricky tenses. Start reading dictionary again.
- Vietnamese: start again with that Teach Yourself book

Writing:
- application essay
- writing sample on cities and literature

Applications:
- GRE: sign up for Aug generals; find out about next subject test
- start studying for subject test (so much to cover that I’m panicking slightly. Have to go buy NAAL I)
- find essays to send to Prof R. for recommendation letter, check with Brown about dossier — consider asking Prof C. for letter.

- work on comparative literature/Asean paper
- do MA in SE Asian studies (with scholarship?)

*

“Getting started, keeping going, getting started again — in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm not only of achievement but of survival, the ground of convinced action, the basis of self-esteem and the guarantee of credibility in your lives, credibility to yourselves as well as to others. So this rhythm is what I would like to talk about briefly this morning, because it is something I would want each one of you to experience in the years ahead, and experience not only in your professional life, whatever that may be, but in your emotional and spiritual lives as well — because unless that underground level of the self is preserved as a verified and verifying element in your make-up, you are going to be in danger of settling into w hatever profile the world prepares for you and accepting whatever profile the world provides for you. You’ll be in danger of molding yourselves in accordance with laws of growth other than those of your own intuitive being.”

- Seamus Heaney

*

I’ve mentioned before that I love the Guardian’s Digested Reads — take this version of Harold Bloom, for instance. And anyone who’s read Jeanette Winterson has got to laugh at this. Beowulf, too.

To read: Thomas Lynch’s Bodies In Motion And At Rest and Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius.

“You know, Camille, the day when God made Adamsberg, He’d not slept at all well the night before.”
Camille looked up.
“Really? No, I didn’t know that.”
“Well, it’s true. Not only had He had a bad night, He’d run out of stuff. So like an idiot He popped down to ask the Other Guy if He could borrow some gear.”
“You mean…the Guy down below?”
“Himself. So the Other Guy seized a golden opportunity and lent Him loads of gear. And God, who still hadn’t recovered from His night on the tiles, didn’t get the mixture right either. That’s the primal soup He made Adamsberg from. Not your usual working day.”
“Nobody told me that before.”
“You can check it in all the right books,” Danglard said with a smile.
“And what then? What did God give Jean-Baptiste?”
“He gave him intuition, gentleness, beauty and ease.”
“And what did the Devil give him?”
“Indifference, gentleness, beauty and ease.”
“Bugger.”
“Quite. But it was never discovered what proportions the absent-minded Lord used for His concoction. It remains a major theological mystery down to this day.”
“I don’t want to be involved in the argument, Adrien.”
“That’s only to be expected, Camille. It’s a well-known fact that when God created you, He’d just woken from seventeen hours’ sleep, and was consequently in tip-top shape. He spent a whole blessed day shaping you with His skilled hands.”
Camille smiled.

*

Am looking for high-waisted skirts after browsing through lovely fashion photos by a Nordic lass.

A: Yeah, he’s pretty wise.
B: That’s a quality we don’t hear about often.
A: It’s fantastic. It’s like having my own private oracle. I think he’s made himself read and think a lot since the age of two and a half.
….
C: Well the one I’m with is extremely conscientious. Stuff gets done. But guilt interferes with naps.

*

Minz has gotten me hooked on Fred Vargas. What with all the Maigrets, it’s all been fluff reading of romans policiers lately.

“But they’re only words. Not sticks and stones. You know the rhyme? Words can never hurt you. If they could, we’d know about it by now.”
“But we do know, Le Guern. Rhyme isn’t reason. Words have always been killers.”
“Since when?”
“Ever since someone shouted ‘Off with his head!’ and people rushed in to do the job. Since forever.”

- Have Mercy On Us All, Fred Vargas

M’s also linked to this interesting site by/for students.

AND so I clambered back onto the exercise bandwagon tonight after falling off it for a few months — went for a brisk walk/jog around the estate, which was quite lovely as the resident bats were flittering around and a row of fragrant trees was in bloom. Back home now snacking on edamame, grapes and almonds. Ah, nice, simple pleasures that are good for you.

WAS just rereading JD and DY on what music means to them. I really do love the two of them.

I still love music. I love it so I want to create it, to create the sounds that I have in my head. That’s why I still play. I love it so I want to share it. That’s why I go round like a crazed idiot at times insisting that people listen to this and that. I love it that in spite of all my obvious failings as a musician, of all my self-doubts, I try to ignore them to keep my passions alive. Music is beyond exams, beyond competition, beyond being a profession. Music is an art, and with it comes all the wonderful implications that art brings with it. It’s about feeling, about thought, about passion, about reason, about life, about death, about rebirth. It’s about being human. And if I had to discover it the painful way, I’m glad that at least I was lucky enough to do so.

(Word: wonder)
A: Seven what of the world?
B: Dwarves!

(Word: parachute)
C: What colour is my…
D: Underwear?

*

Concert with audience participation — Lim Yau turned around and conducted the audience during the last movement of 刘湲’s 《土楼回响》

“你有心来俺有情 唔怕山高水又深 山高自有人开路 水深还有造桥人”

So I’m now exploring the half of my heritage that’s Hakka and googling 山歌s.

Aimé Césaire has died. A sample of his poetry here. Cahier d’un Retour Au Pays Natal here.

I first came across him in postcolonial literature classes, but I didn’t pay much attention to him until I read the beautiful, stunning, strange words in Cahier that sent shivers down the spine and an opening up and joy, words that have a lasting and profound effect on you. There are some works that you remember for the intensity they awakened when you first read them — The Thought Fox, Invisible Cities, Personal Helicon, Mrs Dalloway. Césaire’s works too.

*

A: Sorry I can’t make it to the wedding.
B: No problem. We’ll visit you with photos and videos. We’ll even re-enact the whole thing for you!

C: Who were those people who first thought of eating sea urchin?
D: Probably the same type of people who invented gui ling gao.
C: And how did people ever come to think of acupuncture?

Image © 几米

IMAGINE going through years of life with the gut feeling that none of it matters yet, that it will start at some point in the future, that the present doesn’t really count. Have you ever told yourself that everything will ultimately fall into place once you publish that book/buy that apartment/finish your bond/meet the one?

It’s a way of hedging your bets and avoiding risks. “In the meantime” people almost always have big plans: to get in shape, to sign up for some classes, to quit their jobs, to start that novel, to change their lives. The present is trivialised; it’s the future that matters. All of they things they’re not happy with are just for now. Like nicotine, “in the meantime” can be habit-forming. I should know.

A: Why is the lion’s head on top of a pineapple?

(Images of the evolution-gone-wrong creature here.)

Maybe this is what we get in life, a few great loves: loves that return us to ourselves when we need it most. And maybe some of those loves aren’t people, but places — real and adopted homes — that fill us up with light and energy and hope at moments when we feel especially tired or lost. That is the beauty of love in all its forms. We don’t know when or how it is going to save us.

- Gem of a quotation Anais found in the NYT archives

I SUPPOSE, for some time, I’d lost heart for a variety of reasons. Things had settled. They were not unhappy. I found ways to occupy some days, some nights. Took things one day at a time, biting off bite-sized chunks, coasted along comfortably in the day job.

And I think that that’s important for balance — lying dormant for a while, which prevents exhaustion and gives you time to take stock of resources. Still, I didn’t feel things as intensely, didn’t yearn, didn’t get fired up with that thirst for life and experience that drove me for much of my early 20s. Not much went deeper than the top layer of life and into the subterranean place where emotion and imagination chemically react into self-revelation.

Then you meet new people, or reconnect with old friends, get in touch with those who have exuberance, inner fire, emotional courage, daring abandon and fierce love — to go together with the intellect, the imagination, the ability and the talent. The natural scientists, musicians, ethnomusicologists, rural health doctors, come what may.

Or you read a book, or really listen to a piece of music, and worlds open again. On the one side the commonplace commonsense, and then you catch a glimpse of the other — the inordinate, extravagant underside that lies beneath the quotidian.

WAS at “Little Tokyo” Cuppage Plaza, getting food orgasms from the slightly charred foie gras and oysters and plump scallops at Kazu. It’s a small yakitori restaurant packed to the brim even on a weekday evening — we were lucky to get seats without reservations. Good conversation, cold beer, little skewers of perfection, happiness.

And then there’s bopping to cheesey old hits such as Cher’s Believe.

“What am I supposed to do
Sit around and wait for you
Well I can’t do that
There’s no turning back
I need t-i-ime to move on
I need l-o-ove to feel strong…”

*

A: I got a cheap deal at the Bali massage places as I spoke Bahasa. I just kept saying please, I’m a poor student.
B: How do you say “please” in Indonesian?
A: Tolong.
B: Do you think they’ll listen if I just repeat “tolong, tolong”?
A: Please lah. They’ll just charge a higher price for your temerity.

On pirated CD vendors in KL
A: Do you think it’ll work if I say “tolong”?
B: They’re Cantonese!

Languages
- French has gone to the dogs. Can read but must revise verbs.
- Chinese is passable, but not as fluent as I’d like it. Forgotten most of 文言文。
- Vietnamese has regressed to almost nothing.
- Let’s not talk about German. I can still understand schmaltzy pop songs, but that’s about it.

Grad school prep
- Haven’t even signed up for GREs, though I’ve been doing practice tests.
- Have to find out more about subject tests.
- Lots of writing to do.

Love life
- After hearing about all sorts of theories of attraction, have checked out a variety of books from the library, including Men Are From Mars etc. Interesting theories but when you meet the right person…it shouldn’t be so hard.
- Good dates. Fantastic conversation ranging from odd doctor encounters to memories of places and grandparent stories.

Faith
- Still stuck in first gear; hard to come to grips with questions I have.

*

Details

Fashionistas, don’t scream — I’ve just bought a denim cheongsam.

I’ve a few qipaos that I sometimes wear to the office or out on dates, but this is the least formal one of the lot; it’s made of thinnish indigo denim, and is more like an A-line dress with a mandarin collar than a cheongsam, though it does button up the same way. A bit too loose around the waist for my liking, but then I can wear it with a red sash I have. Cute buttons and nice details. It’s a cheongsam with sei (Chinese dialect for “style”). I love!

*

Nice lyrics:

但已经又一年又三年
又是一个世纪
又春天又夏天又是落叶满地
你还守着你自己
不让幸福再靠近

I ENJOY being with this group of people because they haven’t hardened into people who only think of themselves in one way or another; their interests are fluid and sincerely felt, and they interpret things with the spirit of generosity. Not so many people can retain a certain type of youthful passion — no longer careless, care less, but tempered with experience — not so many people can retain heart.

“C’est mon idéalisme stupide, mais aussi ce qui me fait tenir, le cristal, les manifestes, l’idée que plus haut et puis toujours devant.”

*

“I’ve had my share of doomed love affairs, and my heart looks like a western German city in 1950. There’s prosperity and quite a lot of rebuilding, but you can still see where the bombs hit.”

WHY is it that I can remember details on mitosis and the autonomic nervous system and how ox-bow lakes are formed but can’t recall the basic plot outlines of Rushdie novels and The Great Gatsby? Gnash, complain, whine. Waaaah!

*

Talking of a particularly nasty specimen.
A: He should be punished by the state and tattooed. The tattoo will serve as a warning to other women.

*

Minzhi’s survey of libraries and canoodling.

Romance in the libraries? I’ve only been asked out to coffee after someone nearly squashed me in the movable stacks in the Chinese Studies Library down Walton when I was looking for 金庸 books. Oh Walton, how I loved that street, with the Phoenix and the vindaloo and chippies and the bars.

A couple of good dates in the libraries, too, picking out books for the other person to borrow. And just studying together back in those days. But enough of reminiscing, huh? Time to create new memories.

I REMEMBER when I was standing in the quad and I thought: I want this. The passion to pursue what one thinks is important even if it is difficult, or not to one’s personal advantage. The hours may be long, and there is grunt memorisation, and it may be solitary. Still there was the fellowship in being with people of like minds, the real and easy intimacy, or the distance of just discussing class and ideas and reading.

You know, it’s the same stories, really, what makes good telling, good reading. Births and marriages and travel and pilgrimage, of finding one’s way, how we choose why paths fork. Listening to Suzanne Vega songs, Zhou Xuan, this lovely McCartney number Waterfalls, the sharing of music — the sharing of food, sights, stories, plays, concerts, routes.

*

A talks about rising rents and looking for a new apartment.
B bursts into song, singing Paul Simon’s Homeless.

A: I thought you’d be one of those people who take 15 years to open up.
B: Oh it’s more like 15 minutes. Less if there’s alcohol.